Mosaic

I was thinking about an Alice Paul quote yesterday when I was driving to my eye exam. It didn't just pop into my head; I was re-reading a piece I wrote about her and the movie Iron Jawed Angels back in 2017, and looked up a quote of hers I vaguely remembered from writing that piece. Here's the quote:

I always felt the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us put in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.

Paul was talking about the suffrage movement, and she was a central figure in the passing of the 19th Amendment. She was one of the Silent Sentinels, who protested outside of the White House and were arrested multiple times. She, along with other suffragists, were jailed and abused, including being force fed during "The Night of Terror." After the passage of the 19th Amendment, Paul shifted her focus to promoting the Equal Rights Amendment and adding women to the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Check out the Alice Paul Institute if you want to learn more about her or the Lucy Burns Museum. 

Anyway, I was driving to my appointment thinking about what I was going to do for today's piece, trying to decide if I wanted to do something related to Women's History Month, or possibly about Breonna Taylor (yesterday was the anniversary of her murder). As I was driving the two ideas merged in my head and then I remembered the Alice Paul quote about us each contributing a stone to the mosaic of the movement. Breonna Taylor didn't get to decide what stone she would be contributing to the mosaic, but she's there, reminding us that we have so much more to do. I think about her a lot, and how we've (the collective WE) have failed her over and over again since she was murdered. We'll continue to fail her if we don't hold the police accountable for her death. We'll continue to fail her and others if the movement doesn't do better in terms of intersectionality and inclusion. 

Today's piece is my attempt at creating a mosaic of us each adding our stone, or stitch in this case. The only thing I drew to start was the line break in the right corner. I did want to include some shapes, like the feather and the star, but there was no planning around where those would go or what color I'd use for either. I let it be what it needed to be. One of the unexpected joys of this piece is the red flower. It started as a gold French knot, then I added the red French knots. I realized it looked like a flower after the first three red knots, so I added more and then the stem. It reminded me of Breonna Taylor, and the chain stitches made me think of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. The bottom right corner is intentionally unfinished, waiting for others to add their stones to the mosaic.

I was also listening to Patti Smith's album Banga while I was conceptualizing this piece yesterday. One of the songs on that album is called "Mosaic." It's one of my favorite songs on that album, and has a great refrain that fits in nicely with today's piece: 

Precious heart, precious seed, precious life conceived
In the ring of fire, in the sleep of peace
Nothing stops desire for the human beat

A little collage of my three WIP posts from earlier today.

Details:
Stitches: back, straight, split, stem, chain, satin, twinkle, and cross stitches, French knots
Thread palette: I used 16 colors, 8 from DMC and 8 from Sublime Stitching, 3 or 6 strands

• DMC: 310 (3), Blanc (3), 728 (6), 666 (3), 4212 (6), 415 (6), 3845 (3), 3818 (3)
• Sublime Stitching: 801 (6), 602 (3), 012 (6), 504 (3), 030 (3), 302 (6), 402 (3), 201 (6)